Lost on the way

Say say my playmate
Won't you lay hands on me
Mirror my malady
Transfer my tragedy

When it comes, it's in a wave. You cannot hide. No mantras will dispel it. Like an old friend, you say, I haven't seen you in a while.

***

I am *mumblety-mumble* on Saturday. I'm already older than Jesus when he died, and I'm yet to save the world.

You know, if your god loved us, we would grow to 45, then turn around and start getting younger until we were 18, then turn around. Around and about. Birthdays would then be something to celebrate. We would not waste our lives on wars. We would love ourselves too much for sacrifice.

***

Obama said something that made the wingnuts salivate. I only just read it, but it's quite stunning. The wingnuts think it is something communist, but it's not. Anyone who knows Buddhism knows what it is:

Because our individual salvation depends on our collective salvation.

Of course, it's possible that Obama is only pretending to be a Christian, but who knew he was a Buddhist? This is as clear a statement of the ideal of an adherent of the Mahayana school as you could wish to read. It's quite striking. It would be inconceivable that Obama didn't know what the Mahayana tradition entails.

Maybe he is enlightened. He doesn't seem like he would be, but who knows? Wouldn't a Buddha take whatever path he needed to? Maybe he's the Antichrist.

Maybe he's just a cunning politician. The notion that the nation is greater than the individual is essential to the left in a real sense. The left is a rejection of individualism

And we should reject it. We are nothing without each other. We truly are unfulfilled if no one ever touches us, if no one ever can. We can build cages of gold, but they are cages no matter their substance.

***

beat the skins and let the
loose lips kiss you clean
quietly pour out like light
like light, like answering the sun

I will never die if you love me. So love me, you owe me my life. You owe me. I've given you so much, you don't even know how to measure it. I've given you so much more than you know how to put a measure on.

Put aside your foolishness, and dance with me. I am old and slow, but we don't get younger. Put aside your rage about what I cannot be. Love what I can and I will love what you can too.

Did you ever hold a flower in your hand and regret that it now can only fade? I watched the crops die in my back yard when my child was born and I had no time to tend them.

All our life is no time to tend the crops we sow. I want to die and you owe me a life.

***

I have learned helplessness because I do not know where the door is.

Is it a sign of hope or simply human nature to believe that there even is a door?

***

Tonight, I pick Zenella up from Girl Guides and she is happy as Larry. Your life is happy? I say to her and she's smiling and nodding. We're going on camp, she says.

We should go camping, I say. I will buy a tent and we can all go. She is smiling and nodding.

I say, we should go first, me and you, to see how it goes. And she beams in a way that you cannot fake, you cannot buy, you can only reveal when you please someone deeply.

I am a good person. I cannot believe I am being punished for anything, because I am good in my heart. I know it. I know this is knowledge in faith. I know I do not exist in any real sense. I know there is no I writing this. Still, I am good in my heart and that cannot be destroyed, and I don't know why.

***

I feel like I should just leave, and you would not miss me. I feel like you would make me dust before I had even closed the door. I do not know how to be memorable and I do not know how to be worthwhile.

I feel like the pain in my chest will grow, and I will be gone without even a stone to mark me. I do not think I mind it so much that I will do anything to change it. I will pretend I don't know how and so will you.

I feel like I will never sit in my walled garden, with bees in my pear tree. I will not grieve for what I should have had, or could have had. I will grieve only for the tousle-haired boy who ran on Hayle beach, the wind in his hair, salt in his eyes, free, because he got lost in this world, and once you are lost, it seems, there is no way home.

***

I think enlightenment consists not of never having been, but of realising that you never were, and once you have realised that, you are no more.

posted by Dr Zen @ 7:48 pm